Monday, November 10, 2008

Living the Gore Life: Nuclear Protest. And: "If Gore Were Arrested"

Every year I crack up at the dateline* of the protest stories. From EarthTimes:

Gorleben, Germany - Thousands of protesters held up a truck convoy carrying nuclear waste in Germany Monday, repeatedly invading a 20-kilometre road leading to a secure storage warehouse. Police said the protests, the biggest since 2001 during the waste transport operations, which take place every few months, were also more violent than usual. Protesters had tried to undermine a railway, seize a truck and shot signalling flares at a police helicopter....

...The train carried the waste from a reprocessing plant La Hague, France to a railhead in the town of Dannenberg, close to Gorleben. About 15,000 protesters defied a storm to camp out near Gorleben. They said the large turnout was prompted by debate in Germany about returning to nuclear power for the sake of reduced carbon-dioxide emissions....MORE

Mr. Gore is not opposed to civil disobedience if someone thinks their cause demands it. From CNN:

Gore calls for coal plant protests

Former vice president and environmental campaigner Al Gore has urged young people to protest against new coal-fired power plants that don't use carbon capture and storage technology.

Speaking at the opening plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting in New York, Gore said: "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.">>>MORE

And from The Nation:

If Gore Were Arrested...

Fresh from winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his climate change evangelism, Al Gore is apparently considering an invitation from a prominent environmental group to engage in civil disobedience against the construction of new coal-fired power plants. Rainforest Action Network issued the invitation to the former Vice President, according to RAN executive director Michael Brune. The San Francisco-based group has a twenty-year history of protesting against destructive logging practices and other causes of climate change; it specializes in targeting corporations as much as governments.

"We came across a quote from Gore in an interview with [New York Times] columnist Nicholas Kristof back in August, saying he didn't understand, quote, 'Why there aren't rings of young people blocking bulldozers and preventing them constructing new coal-fired power plants,'" said Brune. "We thought, 'Great idea!' That's the kind of activism we do at RAN. So we decided to invite Gore to join us."

Gore's office confirmed that the former Vice President had received RAN's invitation and was considering it, though no decision has been made....MORE